Title: Decisions andChoices
Author: Miz Thang
Characters/Pairing: Draco Malfoy, HP/DM
Rating: FRT / PG-13
Word Count: 712
Warnings: None. Slash, obviously.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the little story's idea. Everything else belongs to who it belongs to.
Summary: "Do you have any friends, at all?" For my au100 claim of Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy. This is the Big Ass Table.

Harry Potter was a loser. Common knowledge, that was. As Dudley Dursley's cousin that everyone was ordered to stay away from unless they wanted Dudley's oversized self coming after them, he had the loner life cut out for him. Of course, until he reached the age of ten and met Draco Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy, whose family was obviously full of big spenders and had just moved somewhere in the neighborhood (a reason for which his father wouldn't disclose to him) and, full knowing how famous Potter was to wizards, couldn't understand for the life of him what the wizard, albeit half-blood, was doing in a school full of filthy Muggles. He didn't even know what he was doing there (something else his father wouldn't tell him).

One thing was for sure; Draco Malfoy wasn't in the least bit scared of Dudley Dursley. For one, his father was the most influential parent in the school, Draco was sure, and secondly, Draco knew kids larger than Dursley, namely Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe.

On his first day at the school, Draco sat next to Harry. When the boy looked at him, startled and surprised, Draco gave him a sardonic look and asked if he'd ever seen people before, or if it was a new occurrence for him, to which Harry snapped that he had seen people before, thank you very much. Draco, because he found it enjoyable to antagonize the Boy Who Lived that didn't know he was so, then asked if he'd talked to people before. Harry's glare only darkened.

Draco then leaned back in his seat and looked at Harry speculatively. "Do you have any friends, at all?"

Harry didn't answer, continuing to glare at Draco. Draco pegged it as the start of a beautiful friendship.

-

It was all over. Everything. Lucius Malfoy's plan in order to help his Dark Lord win against Harry Potter had backfired.

He stood, covered in ash, dirt, and someone's blood, his wand dangling precariously in his hands and his Gryffindor tie looking for all the world as if it could fall apart at that very second.

He blinked, taking in the destruction around him. Some rose, most didn't. He scanned the faces, dismissing the unimportant ones.

Draco Malfoy was still a pompous bastard when he got in the mood (but the sorting hat told him seven years ago that a friendship already made and his brash behavior was enough to fit him into the lion's den).

Hermione was alive, and he didn't see Neville or Seamus, or Dean, or Ron, but that didn't really matter because –

Green eyes behind broken spectacles locked on his. The air seemed to rush back into his lungs as relief filled every inch of his being.

"Harry." He murmured. His lips twisted into a wry smile. A smile returned because they both survived.

Hermione told him, some hours later, after they dealt with the reporters and the media and were considered "important roles in the war," that he and Harry were like a love story waiting to happen (he assumed that she was including the manipulation of his father to use him to get to Harry, and also the many times in the past seven years at Hogwarts in which the adventures the foursome had gotten into had often included fights between himself and Harry, him and Ron, him and Hermione, him and all three simultaneously, or just him spending half the year in the infirmary).

She told him that the climax was in the passionate, really, really, unexpected kiss in the middle of the wreckage that was most likely to appear on the cover of the Daily Prophet – much more likely than a picture of Harry killing Voldemort. He thanked her for her bad attempt at humor and support and as silence fell between them, thought on what this all meant.

His father had made a choice. A choice to use his own son in order to kill another child. And had been caught in the act. And because of his choice, Draco finally had a chance to make some of his own.

He smirked, leaning back in his seat and thinking of a certain green-eyed Gryffindor he'd sat next to seven years ago in a Muggle classroom.

Decisions…decisions…